Burnout is not about trying to give too much, but about trying to give things that I don’t really have to give. It’s a kind of violence to our God-given selves. The greatest irony of burnout is that we’re killing ourselves while trying to save others. It’s like being unable to swim right now yet I’m jumping in the ocean to keep you from drowning.
Satan’s ploy is to make you believe your core value as a person is tied to how much work you do, how much activity you can accomplish, how much stuff you can accumulate, how much business you can generate. In order to possess any worth under this system—just like Israel under Pharaoh’s rule—you’ve got to be able to rattle off everything you’ve been doing, one by one, adding it all up into a big gob of bullet points and checklists that ought to impress anybody.
We please him most not by frantically trying to make ourselves good but by throwing ourselves into His arms with all our imperfections and believing that He understands everything and loves us still.
God brings us to the place of total dependence upon Himself to demonstrate that He is totally dependable… The more completely I depend on God, the more He surprises me by the results that follow — results that I could never have achieved as long as I depended on my own efforts.
Rest is the climate that faith grows in (see Heb. 3:11–4:11). It comes out of the peace of God. And it is the Prince of Peace who will soon crush satan underneath our feet (see Rom. 16:20)! What is restful for us is violent to the powers of hell. That is the violent nature of faith.
Politicians compete for the highest offices. Business tycoons scramble for a bigger and bigger piece of the pie. Armies march and scientists study and philosophers philosophise and preachers preach and labourers sweat. But in that silent baby, lying in that humble manger, there pulses more potential power and wisdom and grace and aliveness than all the rest of us can imagine.